As electronic assistive devices, e.g., for navigational and other purposes, become more prevalent in vehicles, there is a need to ensure that the driver's hands are not needed to operate such facilities, i.e., to ensure that the driver's ability to operate the vehicle is no impaired by tending to other tasks that require manual manipulation. To this end, many cars that include assistive devices also include a voice recognition facility for enabling the driver to operate the assistive devices via voice command
However, such systems rely on accurate recognition of the user voice commands, and it is currently not always a straightforward technological matter to accurately recognize a user voice and command in the noise compromised environment of an automobile interior. In particular, not only is there a substantial amount of background noise in such environments, relative to other indoor environments, but there is also generally a higher concentration of speakers. For example, a driver may have a spouse and one or more children and/or guests in a car on certain occasions when it is desired to use voice command functionality, and if one or more of the passengers are speaking or making audible utterances such a laughing etc. during the voice recognition task, it is often difficult for the system to accurately perform voice recognition. This can be especially problematic when the background voice is a child's voice, due to the vast difference in basic frequencies involved.